The Million Pound Drop: drop dead exciting?

The Million Pound Drop: questions designed to create maximum indecision. Photograph: Channel 4

The Million Pound Drop returns for its third full series tonight and I can't wait. I both love and hate everything about it all at the same time – from the ludicrous aircraft hanger set and stage lighting, to host Davina McCall (noticeably less screechy and static than her Big Brother incarnation).

The show's questions are brilliantly weighted and sequenced to cause maximum indecision. In life your first thought is usually your best thought but on TMPD they give contestants time to change their minds and a partner to share that indecision with. Then there is the selection of the contestants themselves. Most have little chance of winning anything and certainly not a million quid on account of a) the show's brilliantly crafted and cruel format and b) everyone who has ever been on it appears to have no general knowledge whatsoever. None.

TMPD racks up vicarious thrills whether it provides winning couples, which we can cheer on and feel happy for if they win (but only £25,000 please, any more and we'll be sick with envy) or losing ones. Although Davina and the studio audience are on their side, I'd wager most people watching at home are delighting in their failure. Yes the show has provided a handful of winners (the most anyone has won is £75,000) but far more common is the look of despair on a players face as the chance of winning hundreds of thousands of pounds disappears from their clutches because they didn't know who Colonel Sanders was.

What's very smart about TMPD is that the contestants can make it all the way to the final question, when there are only two possible answers, without getting any of the preceding ones correct. The rules are that of the four and then three multiple choice answers, in the latter rounds, covering the trap doors down which their money will fall, they must only leave one without any cash piled on top of it. This means that even if you think you know the answer you can hedge your bets.

Oddly if someone is totally certain of an answer and moves all their bundles of cash (there is something brilliant about all those bundles of £50 notes too, as if they've just robbed a bank) over one "drop" then the manipulated tension and drama falls to pieces. When popstar Sophie Ellis-Bextor and her mum Janet Ellis, appeared on the show playing for charity, Davina bristled visibly because the pair were decisive, knew the answers and stopped the clock almost immediately – most couples on the show spend a tortuous minute inviting us to listen to the tedious windmills of their minds, the mother and daughter were having none of it. They still lost of course.

There is another layer the show has cleverly delivered – the fact that it's live means that you can play along on your laptop or fill Twitter and Facebook with your eloquent snark. All those pauses and spaces give you time to multi-task. Or Google the answers.

This army of Googling and Wikipedia-ing viewers has led to a couple of controversies – most notably a couple called Johnny and Dee (no relation) had to be invited back because their belief that Sylvester McCoy was the longest-serving Doctor Who turned out to be technically correct, or rather technically not wrong. In America there was an even bigger howler on their version of the show over a question about what was available to buy first – Post-It notes, Apple Macs or Sony Walkmans? The contestants gambled on Post-Its, they were told they were wrong but it turned out to be correct. In pitching questions that we think we know the answers to but don't the show is obviously treading a very difficult line but in doing so it allows everyone to take an educated guess.

So what do you think of The Million Pound Drop? What do you love and dislike about it? If you've played along at home what's the most you've won? And while we're at it, what are there least of in the human body – bones, teeth or pairs of chromosomes?

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